DIY and Your Own Business – The Reality

Work in your own business, not alone with a Stopcocks Women Plumbers franchise

In UK we believe the DIY myth, even when it comes to our own business it’s very powerful. Doing it ourselves is satisfying and ensures a great job. We believe DIY saves money… but does it?

There are loads of important things we wouldn’t dream of DIYing, like surgery and other things we want done really well that we’re happy to pay for like getting our hair cut.

So why do we risk our livelihood?

Why leave something as important as setting up and running our own business to someone who isn’t expert at it?

Can you afford the time it’s going to take you to learn to do it well and could it be more useful to spend that time earning at something you’re great at?

You might be a brilliant plumber but employing yourself in your own business is nothing like being employed. When you’re employed your priority is the thing you’re employed as. There is admin, but it’s not something completely new you have to learn and to become really good at quickly, and that simply has to be top priority if you’re going to eat in six months.

Wouldn’t you be far better off getting well paid to do what you’re good at rather than struggling with these things alone?

Julie, Running her own Stopcocks business in Oldham

If you’re running your own business alone, you will find that you need to spend MORE of your energy setting everything up to have a business, and once it’s going well you still need to spend valuable time and energy running it. When things go well this time doesn’t decrease and that’s in a best case scenario.

To effectively run your own business you have to learn how to market your services, design your website, make sure it’s found, get great at Facebook marketing, design a system to make sure you get paid-make sure the payments come in by chasing them, know all the laws about storing your customers details and be sure you’re always fully compliant (the recent requirements around Data Protection Regulations has spawned a small industry happy to take your money) as well as being excellent at that thing you do.

‘Never mind, I’ll do things the old fashioned way, with a book’ but what if you lose it? Hard won contacts gone and all your customer’s details in someone else’s hands!

Petra who runs her own Stopcocks business in Central, South and West London

What about stopping work to answer the phone or missing out on great jobs because you didn’t answer the phone? What’ll happen to your own business when you go on holiday? Have you heard the one about being your own worst boss? – Go figure.

And doing everything on your own, when what you’d really wanted was to be a plumber, doing excellent and beautiful plumbing, being a hero and saving your customers day after day.

It can be immensely satisfying to learn a new craft, but learning something new, that you’re not cut out for and to a deadline when you have more useful things to do? Why?

If the thing you’re DIYing is something you’re in flow doing, that aligns with your skills, you can be certain of a beautiful job by doing it yourself, but while you’re learning it may take a long time and there will probably be some mistakes along the way.

Is DIY cheap? Well now, here’s the rub. If you don’t have to buy tools or lessons, if you’re not paying over the odds for materials because you are buying just one or two rather than a hundred and perhaps most importantly, if you’re not losing money because you could be making it doing something else, if you’re actively choosing to do this with your time, maybe it’s worthwhile expense. Otherwise?

Did I mention it’ll take a lot of your time?

This blog is about your life and your livelihood. How come we simply don’t count the cost of DIYing our own business as money or measure the time away from everything we’d rather be doing?

Jennie, who runs her own Stopcocks business in Weymouth

Why do it all on your own? Most new businesses fail in the first few years because the people making them who had wanted to spend their time doing the thing they’re great at, have to not do that thing. They have to spend their time learning a whole new set of skills that they may not enjoy or be good at – while their home, food, quite probably their relationship and children depend on them getting it right.

It doesn’t have to be this way with all that unnecessary pressure.

We can help, it’s what we do.

A Stopcocks franchise allows you more freedom to be the great plumber you are, earning more, more quickly, working when you want to and still having freedom and your own business.

We’ve worked it out, a Stopcocks franchise is far cheaper than paying several independent specialists and that is less than the amount of money you’d lose by spending time doing it (and learning how) yourself.

Wouldn’t you rather be earning and making your own business successful as part of a great community of women all doing that together?

Wouldn’t that feel far better?

Go here for more information or just pick up the phone and talk to us 0800 8620010